The Successful Food Blogger: Tips And Techniques

A food blogger is one of the better niches to jump into.

simple
you can do it at home
relatively cheap
food is always evolving and there are multiple stars and celebs out there to hook onto your posts.

But. It is also very competitive- because of the above points. So what can you do? Well you can niche even more into types of food (cookies) or styles of food, like Puerto Rican recipes.

This is what Jannese did through her Delish D'Lites blog. You have probably heard of them through their Podcast on finance, but they started here first. Well, actually they started in a very good engineering corporate job.

Then due to boredom or something else, Jannese found that there wasn't too many Puerto Rican-inspired recipe blogs around. So she started one in 2013. Then she got laid off.

Still having the cooking blogging bug (remember she is still working on the blog) she went to Culinary School and got more into the cooking side. Then she went on a blogging course where she was advised the 4 following suggestions to make money using the blog:

lots of traffic to make the below points practicable
display ads
affiliate programs
sponsored articles.

This is very similar to Ginas story who does a decorating blog.

In 2014 she was hired for another engineering job and her blog was done on her spare time.

Jump ahead to 2017 and the blog was making money through display ads and affiliate products. But it wasn't until COVID where visitors had much more spare time did she have a much bigger jump in traffic and thus profit.

In 2021 she left work to concentrate on her blog. She had 300 blog posts which were generating 5 figures. When she quit her job, later in that same year, the blog jumped to $144k

It is also worthy to note that Jannese started a Podcast in 2019 dedicated to helping people with their finances and using blogs to generate side income.

What does a successful food blogger website look like?

The look of the blog, today, is much more influenced by the social media outlets which Jannese subscribes to- Insta and X (formally Twitter). Large text with cool bright and colourful pictures.

In 2018, the blog looked like this:

This what you are meant to start with when you first blog. Big picture, title underneath. List of stuff on the side including:

newsletter signup
search
About Me
tops recipes
find us on ...

The page is primarily aiming to get people to the site with blog articles. It also looks like the blog is a vehicle for a personal chef style business- testimonials are present on the site.

But what probably is more important is the following:

Allowing the blog to be contacted for sponsorship through the "working with me" link. Here Jannese asks if you want to partner/ use her/ the blog for:

food writing
brand ambassador- representing the brand on the blog, social media etc
company brand events
travel- food writer and photographer
product reviews
media pack

A media pack is very important as it gives pictures of your brand, press releases, articles and general "press" information so that press can have the information at hand which you have curated for them.

There are also 3 branded logos where the blog has been shown in.

Next stage in the evolution of the food blogger

In 2020, the website changes just a little but the personalisation of it increases. Jannese is on show, the pictures have increased mainly to be headers to the categories. The main top down categories have become more professional- including a huge recipe index. Social media websites are more pronounced at the bottom of the screen. Insta is promoted on each post.

The side of the blog is still the same.

Posts are every 2-3 days.
Some of the posts have 200 shares.
Each post has pictures of each ingredient, how it should look at each stage of cooking
Each post has what you should do then at the end there is the actual recipe
they also have interlinking within the post to other posts on the blog
A good idea is what do you serve with the meal that you have just created (addiitonal side dishes etc)
Following with Insta theme, Jannese asks you to post what you have created if you folowed the receipe

Video would work very well here.

Last stage

Now we get to today (as the top title picture shows), repeated:

This is a very long but not overwhelming page in long form. It has stages:

Title
Cool pictures of what can be done- clickable
Recipe search
A ribbon of foods that you might like
A ribbon of testimonials- with pictures
Bio, her favorite recipes
As seen in brand logos/ badges
Another signup graphic
Navigation

So thats...9 blocks of information just on the first/ home page.

It reels you in and promotes confidence in the product (recipes), that you will enjoy it and it is a fun/ happy place to be. The feel and style of the website matches well with the content.

The contact details are now more condensed- send an email.

Post are similar in length with cool pictures, but now we have video from Jannese's channel
the posts have intra site links, display ads and affiliate links tastefully added. For instance there are links to certain products but then she states if you don't like/ want those then you can do it at home this way- a link then goes to somewhere else on the site. There are plusses and minuses to the products used within the articles which is a good
There are 2k Facebook subscribers, 1.45k Youtube subscribers, 28.3k Insta followers, 28.3K Pinterest followers. So for something that is very visual Insta and Pin are the best places- which we have seen has been the main sources of promotion through the blogs life- including guest posting through media packages. The Youtube subs seem low but the videos have been viewed 11k times. this is mainly through the blog and also through sharing.
It is worthy to note that there are specific recipes like "air fryer". Guess what is linked to on the recipes. Yep, air fryer links :) Simple and obvious way to go about promoting affiliate links, but you would be surprised how forced and irrelevant some links on some websites are.
Now there is a shop which highlights "Latin cooking essentials". This is a great idea. they are Amazon affiliated. We have seen how grouped products work well when we analysed top Amazon performers
There are 45k keywords in search, 78.7k backlinks with possibly getting 142k traffic per month

As you can see. A food blog is easy to do, but to do one well takes time and effort. Also finding a niche that you enjoy is really helpful. Once you have those then just go for it- remembering to use social media which is visual and active- videos are helpful.

Can Jannese do anything else? Sure:

cross promote and do cooking with different celebs/ influencers- could also be a Youtube channel
travel, go around and find food places- again a Youtube channel. Introduce people to different ingredients in local markets where they are grown, buy them and then cook them
own cookware/ kitchen items
various cook books highlighting the best of the blog on various topics

These might already be on the site, but if they are they are hard to find. Thus promoting them over some of the display ads would be a good idea.

As per always we wish Jannese all the best.

You can also check out SortedFood here.

Find out more online sales articles, check out the Jasonera blog.